Teachers' uneven distribution cripples system
Teachers' uneven distribution cripples system
By Santi W.E. Soekanto
UJUNGPANDANG, South Sulawesi (JP): The uneven distribution of teachers in the country, one cause of poor education in the remote areas, emerged as the central issue on the first day of the third national conference on education.
Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro, who opened the event, said yesterday that one of the biggest problems in Indonesia is the glut of teachers. However, few teachers are willing to serve in remote areas, even as the problem of unemployment in teacher-satiated urban centers gets worse.
Indonesia currently has around 1.5 million teachers. Every year, some 17,000 new teaching graduates fight for positions in public schools, Wardiman said.
By the year 2020 the country will need only 1.1 million elementary school teachers and 1.195 million junior and senior high school teachers, Wardiman said.
The problem of uneven distribution is caused not only by overproduction, but also by the fact that the government can only pay a limited number of teachers, Wardiman pointed out.
"There are schools which need more teachers, but we cannot afford to pay them," he told The Jakarta Post.
"We also have to think about how we should maintain the teachers already posted. How to make them like teaching by, say, improving their salaries," he said.
According to a 1992 United Nations Development Program figure, Indonesia spends only 4.5 percent of its state-budget on education, one of the lowest levels in Asia. The government, however, says that the total funds spent in 1992/93 were US$1.494 million, or 13.1 percent of the budget, with only the transportation, mining and energy sectors attracting more funding.
Anah Suhaenah, one of the convention's organizers, agreed that the problem of overproduction was a chronic one. "There are places which have an oversupply of teachers, while other regions need a lot more," she told the Post.
The rector of Jakarta's Teacher Training College said many female teachers quit when they get married or when they're posted to a remote area.
"The government should intervene by providing greater incentives for teachers in remote places," she said.
At present, teachers in isolated places such as Irian Jaya or Kalimantan receive salaries and subsidies which are twice as high as their colleagues' in the urban areas of Java. They receive their wages through state-owned Bank Rakyat Indonesia.
"But in places where there are no branches of the bank, teachers often have to pay their own way to go to the cities and fetch their salaries," she said. "You can imagine why teachers don't see teaching positions in remote places as attractive."
Suryanto Suryokusumo, representing the office of the State Ministry for Administrative Reforms, said only 100 of the 1,000 teachers recently posted in Irian Jaya have stayed on.
"Most of the teachers went back home to Java," he said. "Who could really stay and survive there, if even soldiers have a hard time living there?"
One of the Irian Jaya regencies which frequently complains about teachers abandoning their posts is Paniai. Hundreds of teachers over the past several years have left their schools because they could not stand the isolation. Madura Island in East Java is experiencing the same problem.
Suryanto said the distribution problem is caused by poor management and a lack of manpower planning on the part of government agencies. Too many people and government agencies are considered responsible for education, so nobody ends up being really responsible, he said.
"Take elementary schools. They are the responsibility of the education ministry, but elementary schools in the resettlement areas become the responsibility of the transmigration ministry as well," Suryanto said.
Suryanto's opinion has often been voiced by educators and other experts. There has been confusion, for instance, as to the status of Islamic schools, which are under the jurisdiction of both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Wardiman also dismissed reports that his office had promised to increase teaching wages before the 1997 general elections.
"There's no such plan," he told the Post. "The ministry every year struggles to have their wages increased, but it's other agencies which decide."
"Besides, the wages policy is part of the state budget that starts every April. There's no connection with the general elections."